Rain brings relief to rice crop in central region

Wide spread rainfall across the central provinces from Thua Thien-Hue to Quang Ngai on Thursday has brought much needed relief over thousands of hectares of parched rice fields.

Nguyen Thai Lan, from the Hydro Meteorological Forecasting Center in the central region, said this was the second rainfall since the beginning of the year, with some areas seeing upto 30-50m of rain while the mountainous areas in Quang Nam and Thua Thien-Hue Provinces saw more than 70mm.

Agriculture departments in Quang Nam and Thua Thien-Hue Provinces and in Da Nang City said that nearly 10,000 hectares of summer autumn rice crop has escaped drought conditions in these localities, which has been an underlying fear for the last few months.

Rain has also helped dilute salination in rivers, and allowed a number of pumping stations and water treatment plants to resume operations in Quang Nam and Da Nang.